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Magnetically actuated fish-like robots offer promising solutions for underwater exploration due to their miniaturization and agility; however, precise control remains a significant challenge because of nonlinear fluid dynamics, flexible fin…
Continuum soft robots are inherently underactuated and subject to intrinsic input constraints, making dynamic control particularly challenging, especially in hybrid rigid-soft robots. While most existing methods focus on quasi-static…
Dynamic shape-morphing soft materials systems are ubiquitous in living organisms; they are also of rapidly increasing relevance to emerging technologies in soft machines, flexible electronics, and smart medicines. Soft matter equipped with…
This paper presents the application of a learning control approach for the realization of a fast and reliable pick-and-place application with a spherical soft robotic arm. The arm is characterized by a lightweight design and exhibits…
Planning locomotion trajectories for legged microrobots is challenging because of their complex morphology, high frequency passive dynamics, and discontinuous contact interactions with their environment. Consequently, such research is often…
Collaborative robots (cobots) are machines designed to work safely alongside people in human-centric environments. Providing cobots with the ability to quickly infer the inertial parameters of manipulated objects will improve their…
Soft robots have the potential to interact with sensitive environments and perform complex tasks effectively. However, motion plans and trajectories for soft manipulators are challenging to calculate due to their deformable nature and…
This paper studies path synthesis for nonholonomic mobile robots moving in two-dimensional space. We first address the problem of interpolating paths expressed as sequences of straight line segments, such as those produced by some planning…
Accurate and efficient simulation tools are essential in robotics, enabling the visualization of system dynamics and the validation of control laws before committing resources to physical experimentation. Developing physically accurate…
For safe and effective operation of humanoid robots in human-populated environments, the problem of commanding a large number of Degrees of Freedom (DoF) while simultaneously considering dynamic obstacles and human proximity has still not…
We present a mesoscale finger-mounted 4-degree-of-freedom (DoF) haptic device that is created using origami fabrication techniques. The 4-DoF device is a parallel kinematic mechanism capable of delivering normal, shear, and torsional haptic…
The Kilobot is a widely used platform for investigation of swarm robotics. Physical Kilobots are slow moving and require frequent recalibration and charging, which significantly slows down the development cycle. Simulators can speed up the…
Inspired by the vertebrate branch of the animal kingdom, articulated soft robots are robotic systems embedding elastic elements into a classic rigid (skeleton-like) structure. Leveraging on their bodies elasticity, soft robots promise to…
High-speed motions in pick-and-place operations are critical to making robots cost-effective in many automation scenarios, from warehouses and manufacturing to hospitals and homes. However, motions can be too fast -- such as when the object…
Soft robotics has the potential to revolutionize robotic locomotion, in particular, soft robotic swimmers offer a minimally invasive and adaptive solution to explore and preserve our oceans. Unfortunately, current soft robotic swimmers are…
The need to guarantee safety of collaborative robots limits their performance, in particular, their speed and hence cycle time. The standard ISO/TS 15066 defines the Power and Force Limiting operation mode and prescribes force thresholds…
The manual design of soft robots and their controllers is notoriously challenging, but it could be augmented---or, in some cases, entirely replaced---by automated design tools. Machine learning algorithms can automatically propose, test,…
Nature evolves creatures with a high complexity of morphological and behavioral intelligence, meanwhile computational methods lag in approaching that diversity and efficacy. Co-optimization of artificial creatures' morphology and control in…
Accurate simulation of soft mechanisms under dynamic actuation is critical for the design of soft robots. We address this gap with our differentiable simulation tool by learning the material parameters of our soft robotic fish. On the…
Control of soft robotic manipulators remains a challenge for designs with advanced capabilities and novel actuation. Two significant limitations are multi-axis, three-dimensional motion of soft bodies alongside actuator dynamics and…